Waiting

Lawrence Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com

Waiting

Like farmers at the end of a working day
The trees are tired, the sky, the world, all tired
Exhausted from the heat, so very tired;
Creation seems itself to lie in stasis
There panting on the ground, but with great hope
For soon – today, next week perhaps – the leaves
Will stir with news from the royal-blue north,
Permission for the woods to sing again,
To dress in red and gold, to dance before
The silver autumn frosts that crown their year

The Revolution

Lawrence Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com


The Revolution

Little men arguing in shabby rooms
Meetings, manifestos, revolvers, bombs
Informers, spies, social organization,
Speeches, minutes, dues, What is to be Done?
The great cause of the Proletariat
Greetings from our good comrades in Smolensk
Nihilism, committees, secrecy
The thirst for culture is aristocratic
Nihilism is the only art of the people
Rumors, whispers, clandestine magazines
The unification of workers and peasants
Resolutions passed in the factory soviet
Clenched fists to reject the personal life
Electrification and equality
Cigarettes, vodka, the people’s justice
Against the parasitical bourgeoisie
Solidarity to destroy the kulaks
His poetry reeks of sentimentality
Self-centered intellectual decadence
The people’s will for the people’s party
Education for the twentieth century
Lift high the red banner, fill full the graves

Quagmire

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Quagmire

We’re mired once more within a quag
Or quagged, perhaps, within a mire
Evil laughs at the same old gag:
Nero golfs while the world’s on fire

Elegy for Brave Little Cottonpip

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Elegy for Brave Little Cottonpip

For Deedra

In Egypt cats were set as palace guards
To watch the desert from stone-linteled gates
With wide-set eyes, proud lions of the Nile
And in their diminutive dignity
Bless with their furry, purry, royal presence
The households of the ancient kings and queens

And cats have never forgotten their ancient warrant:
To pose, to pace, to pause, to pounce, to please
Their noble queen always, faithful even unto death -
O do not mourn the passing of brave Pip
For now he tumbles and plays among the stars
And purrs to you still, your brave palace guard

Rain With Punctuation

Lawrence Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com

Rain with Punctuation

A house when empty is not always peaceful
But today it is. September rain to heal
The hurt, summer-dry earth floats so softly
And so quietly
That thunder is a loud punctuation
An exclamation mark BANG! In the middle
Of a quiet, meditative line.

Not on my Watch

Lawrence Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com

Not on My Watch

A fellow whose timepiece was off just a notch
Said of a jeweler who was drunk on Scotch,
“He can work on his hangover, but not on my watch.”

How Lucky God is to Have Him

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

How Lucky God is to Have Him

Perhaps he is a seer
Gifted with visions of glory
Still, I don’t want to hear
His me, me, me conversion story

Data Not Available at This time

Lawrence Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com

Data Not Available at This Time

“Data not available at this time”
Scrolls slowly across the tiny screen
But Verizon carefully counts every dime:
Their monthly pound of flesh is never lean

Banned Books Week

A note to The Paris Review:

Banned Books Week is as scripted and as precious as a Hallmark Christmas movie. One hopes the admirable Paris Review will not become as predictable and as uncritical as the sort of people who pour buckets of water over their heads because all the cool kids are doing it.

Matins and Lauds Without Cats

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Matins and Lauds Without Cats

If your sunrise view is of garbage cans
And utility poles leaning over an alley
Or if you have no window, or even a kitchen
If morning dew condenses on barbed wire
Or dripping concrete walls echoing-echoing,
If your only view is of a cinder-block wall
And the only sound is the medicine trolley
Squeaking through its early hospital rounds
Without any coffee or even much hope
Then please feel free to borrow for today
Any of the many, barely-used mornings
From those of us who in our ingratitude
Tend to begin our days of open windows
Not with a joyful litany of praise
But with a tiresome catalogue of complaints

Matins and Lauds and Cats

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Matins and Lauds and Cats

Now stir your morning hopes into a cup
Of coffee sweetly censed with optimism
Along with milk or cream and chemicals;
Switch off the strident, nattering radio
And through the kitchen window note with joy
The dramatic stretchings of indolent cats
Yawning the beginning of their new day,
A tree frog working late, reposing still
Upon the screen as if it were a throne
From which he rules all insect destinies,
And a sudden fluttering in the grass
As an early bird gets his worm indeed
While a vapor of diaphanous mist
Slow-curls among the oaks, perhaps to seek
Some comfortable solitude for the day;
Old Sol, fresh from his adventures in the East
Serves sunlight filtered softly through the damp,
Fresh light for your breakfast, a Matins
Psalm sung to you all the way from a star.

Book Burn Theory

Mack Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Book Burn Theory

                                                                                     

In a recent Orwellian telescreen episode of Big Bang Theory one of the lead characters arrives at a crisis of scientific faith.  Having long worked at an obscure theory of something-ness, the character concludes that all his years of research have been for naught.  In a sort of intellectual purge the young scientist decides to give away all the books he has accumulated on the failed theory.

 

When someone asks him why he doesn’t simply throw away the books, the young man replies with (the quotation is from memory, and might not be exact) “I don’t like the smell of burning books; they remind me of church picnics in East Texas.”

 

Yes, how sad to live in intellectual darkness in East Texas when we could all emigrate to enlightened New Jersey where Snooky and Governor Christie play bridge tag among the abandoned casinos.

 

This is not to say that the telescreen character might not have a small point, despite his bigotry.  Visits to several colleges in East Texas suggest to the observer that the amount of tax revenue flung at rock-climbing walls, swimming pools, foosball parlors, handball courts, and indoor jogging tracks might be higher than the investment in the science program.

 

How curious that on election day this November there might be people sweating on fake rocks who (the people, not the rocks) later won’t have the energy to vote.  Energetic play might be (one doesn’t want to stereotype) easier for some than voting for the legislators who through appointed boards are the controlling authority for public colleges and universities.

 

In The Sand Pebbles Petty Officer Holman has difficulty explaining the theory of steam power to a young Chinese sailor.  Holman develops as an instructional aid the imagery of little dragons running up and down the steam pipes in the engine room, and that works fine.  In our time a petty officer in the Chinese navy might have to explain nuclear power to an American non-voter as little rock stars, fashion designers, and cooking show hosts colliding against each other in the reactor. 

 

In East Texas we have all attended church picnics and other after-the-liturgy social occasions hosted by many religious groups, and there are no reports of either books or heretics being burned as part of the merriment.  Truth, however, is no obstacle to a cheap and easy laugh on the Orwellian telescreen.

 

Recently I read a fifty-year-old book of essays by a Christian writer. The stamps inside the cover reveal that the book had been owned, in turn, by the library of a Catholic seminary, the library of a Catholic church, and the library of a Protestant grade school, all in East Texas, before being remaindered via Goodwill (my book store of choice). 

 

The book was written by a Catholic writer, and so the librarian of the Protestant grade school had affixed to the title page a memo to the students that while there was much in the book not in agreement with that denomination’s teachings and usages, there was much good in it, and that in a spirit of intellectual inquiry and the freedom to disagree the book was available to all. 

 

In sum, three religious institutions in East Texas offered to their faithful the free circulation of this sometimes controversial (and often tiresome) volume for fifty years.  Underlinings, penciled markings, and much wear indicate that many people read this book, both in agreement and disagreement.  St. Vincent’s Seminary did not burn it.  St. Leo’s Church did not burn it.  Cathedral Christian School did not burn it.

 

Further, one can validly assume that the three institutions taught that stereotyping of others is wrong.  The producers and writers of Big Bang Theory might want to think – think, not feel – about that.  That a current stereotype is fashionable doesn’t make it any less a stereotype.

 

Still, no one should ever feel obligated to think well of New Jersey.

 

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